Chapter 1
Marriage is hell—or so I thought until the night a demon popped into my living room and dragged me to actual Hell.
That’s already pretty freak-out worthy in anyone’s book, but to make matters worse—insert the voice of the man from Monty Python’s Life of Brian who’s about to be stoned to death asking, “Making it worse? How could it be worse?”—that brooding jerk of a demon forced me to marry him.
The nerve.
So, yeah, marriage in Hell. Double whammy for me.
And to think, I was bummed about celebrating my twenty-fifth birthday all by my lonesome. Ha.
If I’d known who—what—was going to show up later, I’d have lit some sage instead of a sad little candle on a cupcake.
Blissfully unaware of my impending doom, I stared into the flame of the tiny cupcake candle for a moment, focusing on my wish for the year ahead.
Health? That’s always a good thing to have. I was good on that front, but wishing for it to stay that way sure wasn’t a bad idea.
Success? Given that I’d just landed a good job at one of San Francisco’s most reputable accounting firms, I was doing great here too, but of course that was just the first step up a high-reaching ladder. Keeping what I’d worked so hard for and making sure I’d continue on that path was definitely at the top of my wish list.
Love? Eh…
I grimaced. Love and I weren’t on speaking terms. After a few spectacularly failed relationships, I’d decided to avoid further romantic entanglements for the foreseeable future. They were always so very…tangly. I shuddered.
The flame danced in front of my eyes, topping the “25” candle stuck into the frosting on the red velvet cupcake I’d grabbed at Target on the way home from work.
I swallowed past the pinch in my heart. This would be the first birthday I’d have to ring in alone, without at least one good friend to share my (cup)cake with. Sure, I’d talked on the phone with my BFF and my mom earlier in the day, and I received text messages and posts on my social media from more friends. It just wasn’t the same as actually hanging out and celebrating with someone I loved. I hadn’t realized until now how much it mattered to me.
If I’d been at this job a little longer already, I would have invited my new colleagues… As it was, I’d only just started two days ago, and I was still desperately trying to memorize everybody’s names. The only person at work who’d known it was my birthday today was my new boss. His casually dropped “By the way, Zoe—happy birthday!” almost made me drop my coffee when he popped his head inside my cubicle. I’d stammered back a cringe-worthy “You too!” and watched him retreat with an expression somewhere between confusion and concern, probably reassessing his decision to hire me.
Socially awkward, I could do. Just like replaying mortifying episodes in my head until I wanted to bang said body part against the nearest hard surface. Thank God I was better at accounting than at social interactions.
I took a deep breath. Okay then, I’d just make this part of my birthday wish.
Make new friends, don’t scare them off with my weirdness, keep my job and be great at it, stay healthy.
And definitely, most certainly, not fall in love.
Closing my eyes, I blew out the candle.
“Happy birthday to meeeeeee,” I whispered, trying not to sound pathetic and failing pathetically.
After I extinguished the smoke by squeezing the wick between thumb and index finger, I plucked the candle from the cupcake.
“The next one will be better,” I muttered, picking up the red velvet dessert. “I’ll have colleagues and friends over and throw a huge party here.”
“Yeah, about that…” a deep male voice behind me said.
I whirled around, dropped the cupcake and shrieked.
The last time I’d screamed that loud, I’d opened the shower curtain in my college dorm bathroom to find a ginormous spider right in my face. That was also the one and only time in my life I’d miraculously transformed into a kung-fu master. Alas, those martial arts moves never came to my rescue again.
They certainly deserted me now, when I faced an unknown male intruder in my home.
A tall, dark, and lethally graceful intruder. He lounged against the wall, half wrapped in shadow despite the overhead lights fully turned on. His black clothes—which looked disturbingly like fighting gear—did nothing to hide the intimidating amount of muscles on him, from the broad shoulders, to the strong biceps stretching his rolled-up sleeves, to the powerful thighs.
My eyes snapped back up, focused on that piercing gaze set in a face I’d have described as achingly, sensually beautiful if I’d seen him under different circumstances. You know, as a model in an ad for the latest extravagant Italian luxury line, perhaps, or as the new Hollywood heartthrob.
As opposed to the psycho who’d just broken into my apartment.
Never mind the fact he looked like a fallen angel with whom any hot-blooded woman—and many a man—would want to explore the very meaning of sin. His standing here in my living room, uninvited, unannounced, a stranger with an unknown and likely menacing agenda, pushed him straight into creep territory.
I stumbled back a step, putting more space between us. My heart pounded so loud, my ears were ringing. Sensible questions to ask when confronting a home intruder might be “Who are you?” or “What are you doing here?”
My brain couldn’t decide between the two, so—naturally—what I ended up blurting out was, “Who are you doing here?”
Hi, I’m Zoe, and I’m verbally challenged.
While fires of embarrassment ate up my insides and probably painted my face an unsightly shade of red, Gorgeous Creep’s mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile.
“It’s time, Zoe.”
I froze. He knows my name. Well, duh. Any guy sociopathic enough to calmly break and sneak into a woman’s home would have done his research, right?
He pushed off the wall, and I could have sworn shadows whispered behind him in the shape of wings.
I was losing it. Clearly. This whole situation must have fried something in my brain.
“Let’s get this over with.” He waved a hand in the air, his voice a little too bored for a psycho preparing to act out his twisted fantasy.
We all like to believe we’d be brave in the face of danger, or at least…dignified and trying. So did I. Like most women, I’d mentally worked through various scenarios of being assaulted by a man, and how to best get out of it. Or to avoid it in the first place. I’d thought I had a good handle on what I’d do, a strategy, something.
In reality, as this huge guy approached me, what I did was squeak.
Like a fucking mouse stalked by a tiger.
Scrambling back until I hit the table, I managed to snap, “Stay away from me!” I reached out blindly behind me, my fingers touching my phone. Thank God. I grabbed it, my hand shaking, and unlocked it via Touch ID without taking my eyes off him. “Get out of here or I’m calling 911.”
He chuckled. “And what good would that do?”
“Umm, they’ll send an officer over to arrest you?” If the intruder is still here by that time, that is… My pulse thundered in my head, my breathing way too fast. It occurred to me that in the minutes it would take a cop to get here, this creep could do any number of things to me. Help from law enforcement would do me a fat lot of good if I were dead on the floor.